`t?sc. aa q C OORDENTLIL Meeting of B .E . Faculty of the College of General Practitioners . I attended a meeting of this faculty in Brighton on Sunday , 9th December, in order to contribute to a . discussion on smoking . I was told that the membership of the B .E . faculty was about 400, of which I estimated that about 60 members, mostly accompanied by their wives, attended the meeting , I was requested to talk about the research on which T .M .S .C . is engaged. The other speakers were Dr . W .I . Gordon, Pathologist at the King Edward VII Sanitarium, Midhuret, and Dr . Horaoe Joules of the Central Middlesex Hospital . I was told by the Chairman before 'the meeting that both of the other two speakers had also been asked to talk about research and that it was his intention to keep the discussion on this technical level and not to allow speakers or members from the floor to indulge in provocative propaganda . In the event Dr . Gordon read a thoughtful and well prepared paper on lung pathology in relation to smoking habits, a follow-up and development of the sort of work carried out by Auerbach . Dr . Gordon, of whom we had not previously heard, is a eunj Australian pathologist who struck me as being not only able buiso leve' . beaded . He particularly asked me after the meeting if I would keep hi m in touch with future developments of T .M .S .C . research, because he was particularly interested in the problem of the quantitative measurement of pre-cancerous changes induced in elium by exposur e o cigarette amol e,,.,.smoke condensate or .fractions isolated from it . believe that Dr . Gordon could be a most useful contact . Dr. Joules made no attempt to say anything at all about research, confining his remarks, which extended well over his allotted time limit, to the sort of one-sided propaganda that .we have come to expect from him . Fortunately the London smog of the previous week diverted some of his .inveotive from the tobacco industry to the Tory Government as proprietors of Nationalised industries which in his view are generating altogether too much sulphur dioxide, with criminal disregard for the Nation's health . However, for his remarks o n smoking Joules clearly had the majority of the audience with him . He was loudly applauded and only one or two of the doctors took the trouble to query any of his points at Question Time . Question Time, for which only about thirty minutes remained, covered the following :1 . Are the rise in lung cancer and the drop in tuberculosis related in some war? Joules said not . 2 . Does smoking cause lung cancer through "carcinogens" or general irritation? Useful comment from Gordon who said that the progressive changes he had observed were more consistent with non-specific irritation . http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/pjo64a99/pdf 3. Snuff taking and cancer of the nasal sirua . Contribution from Gordon and myself on snuff taking in the Bantu . 4. Diagnostic X-rays - unlikely to be cause of lung cancer . 5 . Carcinoma in situ . Discussion between one questione r and Gordon as to whether this was unambiguously pre-cancerous . 6 . Cigarette paper? Replied along usual lines . 7 . Cigars, pipes, Turkish tobacco . Replied along usual lines with reference to Planning Committee experiment . 8 . Giving up smoking . Joules had nothing new to say . 9 . Smoke/diesel . fumes . Two or three questioners crossexamined Joules pretty carefully on this subject . He stated categorically that only cigarette smokers suffered from the effects of smog . 10 . Aquafilters . Two questioners had concluded from B .M .J. advertisement that T .M .S . C . was backing Aquafilters . Before I was able to reply, this led Joules to a tirade against the tobacco industry for, as he said, selling filters which were uniformly less efficient than tobacco, and making health claims for them . I was then given the opportunity to deny all these points in the strongest possible tern : . Research Department 12th December 1962. HRB/JRS . http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/pjo64a99/pdf 2